omvsourWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: om is a noun, our is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“om” is a noun and “our” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,970
“om” frequency rank
#76
“our” frequency rank
14046
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature om our
Definition A sacred, mystical syllable used in prayer and meditation. Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our).

Where the eye mixes om and our

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

2 ch
om
3 ch
our

Visual trap between om and our

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: om is /ɒm/ while our is /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14046, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

om is recorded at frequency rank #13,970, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɒm/. our is at rank #76, tagged as adet, pronounced /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 14046, this pair ranks #472,358 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of om vs our

Shared letters: o. Private to "om": m. Private to "our": ru.

"om" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "our" · 3 letters · shape VVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "om" and "our" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "om" is a noun and "our" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "om" or "our" show up more?
"our" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #76 in our English list, against #13,970 for "om". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "om" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "our" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #472,358 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "om" and "our" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "om vs omi". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #472,358 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list